To add to this: Both of these are things we used to do extensively in PHP, years ago. Not only does that pretty much kill the 'unique' angle the article wants t

To add to this: Both of these are things we used to do extensively in PHP, years ago. Not only does that pretty much kill the 'unique' angle the article wants to take, it wasn't a good idea or readable practice back then. I don't doubt that there really are great reasons to use Ruby; hopefully, when the author figures out what they are, he'll revisit this and contrast the real benefits with this unfortunate cruft.